One Saturday in July last year, after a heavy training session, Kidambi Srikanth complained of a headache. The next morning India’s newest badminton star was found unconscious and immediately taken to a hospital. He spent three days in anintensive care unit.
“I was OK one evening but then the next day, when people woke up they saw me lying down in the room,” he said.
“So they took me to hospital. I lost two days of my life there because I have no idea what happened and for one day I was awake.”
Srikanth is not entirely clear even now what it was, other than that it was some kind of viral problem. Reports at the time said it was meningitis, however, possibly picked up amid a bout of hectic travelling the month before.
Within two weeks of getting out, however, he was back on the court. A few months later, in November, the trajectory of his career took a sharp upturn.
In the final of the China Open, he beat the local hero Lin Dan, a five-time winner of the tournament, a five-time world champion and a double-Olympic gold medallist. As one report put it, it was like beating Rafael Nadal on clay.
Srikanth had lost twice to him beforehand, including once in just over half-hour.
“I liked Dan’s game so much, for me, before taking up this sport I dreamt of playing him. When I played him twice before I lost quite easily. But in China, I don’t know how but I beat him,” Srikanth said.
“I didn’t actually have any strategy at the time. It was just to hang in the game, not to give up at any moment.”
It opened the world’s eyes to his talent. He finished the year ranked No 4, having been 47 at the end of 2013 and 240 the year before.
Srikanth is No 6 presently, he has won two tournaments since then and hopes to feature in the season-ending Dubai World Superseries Finals in December.
It has been his distinct, attack-at-all-cost style that has garnered the attention, though his coach, the legendary Pullela Gopichand, says he has become more nuanced since his illness scare.
"There's very few like him, you know, who have such a purely attacking, aggressive mind," the Danish legend Peter Gade said about him to Indian Express recently.
It is a style he developed once he joined Gopichand’s famed academy in Hyderabad at age 16. Until then he had played the game, as he said, as a “time-pass, just like the way normal school kids do”.
When Srikanth joined the academy is when he began to take it seriously, rather than as a recreational activity he used to follow his elder brother into doing.
“From the ages of 10-16 it was more fun on court rather than giving full effort to training. I didn’t train and just enjoyed playing on court. But the academy changed me,” Srikanth said.
“I wanted to become professional so I started training and working hard there.”
His life has changed too. Saina Nehwal’s successes and profile mean badminton has some share of the public spotlight. And as India’s most successful current male player, Srikanth is firmly in it.
“It’s really good. I’m now feeling the attention. People want to know about me,” he said.
“It’s a good place to be in and it’s nice to have all that. So many people back home now wanting you to win something, that is important.”
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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